


Hope Springs Eternal

by RowanBaines



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Established Relationship, Ficlet, Hurt!Spock, Illness, M/M, POV Outsider, Sick!Spock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-16
Updated: 2015-04-16
Packaged: 2018-03-23 07:00:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3758821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RowanBaines/pseuds/RowanBaines
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>They came from the stars. Maybe one day they shall return to the stars, leaving behind the ramshackle dwelling near the cliffs that has been their home.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hope Springs Eternal

**Author's Note:**

> This ficlet was originally posted on my tumblr.

They came from the stars.

 

They moved into the house by the cliffs, a clapboard shanty with a leaking roof and a rickety porch. The two of them live there quietly, the human and the Vulcan, the golden one and the pale one who looks as though he’s being kissed by moonlight even in the day.

 

They say the Vulcan is ill. Sometimes he isn’t seen for days, sometimes weeks, and then the human doctor will come on one of the rare supply ships that stop off at this lonely little planet. The two humans walk out on the hills together, the doctor sometimes arguing, but more often grasping the other man’s shoulder or stroking his arm in comfort. Then the doctor leaves again, and it’s just the human and the Vulcan walking the hills or ambling toward the cliffs, hand in hand.

 

At night they can be seen stargazing together, the human’s expression full of yearning and the Vulcan’s somber. The Vulcan inevitably turns his gaze on the human, and perhaps it is the illness that makes his eyes fill with such pain.

 

Or perhaps it is something else. There is something heavy and dark about the Vulcan despite his pale, gaunt appearance.

 

One night the Vulcan walks down to the cliffs alone. He hovers there, near the edge, a mournful apparition in the gathering fog. When the human comes running and finds the Vulcan teetering on the brink, he yells and weeps and then crumples to the ground as though fatally wounded. The Vulcan does not go down to the cliffs alone after that.

 

The human spends a lot of time working on the house, or in his garden, shirtless and glistening with sweat in the afternoon sun. Sometimes the Vulcan helps tend the garden, but mostly he rests on the padded lounge chair the human drags into the yard for him when the weather is fair. No matter how warm it is the Vulcan always wraps himself in thick blankets, looking delicately beautiful as he watches the human with shadowed eyes.

 

The pair make frequent trips into the heart of the island, where the Healing Pools are. Perhaps our blue waters are even kinder to the Vulcan than they are to us, because the shadows beneath his eyes seem to slowly fade away as time goes by.

 

And time goes by…

 

Lately the Vulcan, too, gazes yearningly at the night sky.

 

They came from the stars. Maybe one day they shall return to the stars, leaving behind the ramshackle dwelling near the cliffs that has been their home.

 

I hope it is so. They are too big for this little place.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on [Tumblr](http://rowan-baines.tumblr.com) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/cmdrspockette)!


End file.
